


A World Without Monsters

by lizbobjones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Beach Holidays, Case Fic, F/M, M/M, Not for any sexy adult content, Other, POV Mary Winchester, Post-Episode: s12e14 The Raid, This is not a positive depiction of their relationship, non-con is only a passing incident of Ketch being a creep to Mary, please heed the warnings, rated mature for violence and character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 20:12:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10143074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: The world is finally free of all monsters, and Mary is taken on a pleasant seaside holiday by Ketch to celebrate their victory. Unfortunately Dean, Cas and Sam tag along and won't let her have the peace she fought for.





	

Let me paint you a picture of a world without monsters.

It’s hot and stifling in the traffic jam on the M25. The camper van has terrible AC and Arthur is pretending it’s fine, though he’s red faced, sweat all around his collar where it squeezes his neck too tightly. He slams his hand down on the horn as the car in front takes too long to move. “God! Women drivers!” He doesn’t swear much. Mostly when he’s driving.

“How do you know she’s a woman?” Mary asks, fanning herself with a roadmap they’d picked up at the last service station.

“Bitch pulled in front of us at the last junction,” he growls.

Mary fans herself harder with the map and stares at the lanes of crawling traffic. She wishes she had something to kill.

It takes too long and they get lost despite the GPS; it’s more trouble than it’s worth on the narrow British roads, and sends them down a lane too tight and twisty for the camper van. They have to back out of it, Arthur swearing the entire way, and circle around to find a different route. By the time they get to the campsite it’s getting dark and it’s too cold, Mary shivering in just her t-shirt and shorts.

The campsite is pretty much a small field beside the woods, a dozen permanent chalets clustered at one end, and in the middle of summer, the rest of the space almost filled to capacity with caravans and tents, a parking lot more than the wildernesses Mary had camped in back home. Arthur’s fancy camper van is the only one like it, and probably costs many thousands of pounds more than anything else there. She hopes no one tries robbing it.

They stop at the office, a shack by the main entrance. Arthur leans out the window to talk down to the bored employee stationed there, demanding to know their reserved spot is still free, and there’s space for the van. The woman rolls her eyes like she can’t believe she stood up to deal with this and says, yeah, there’s space for everyone who booked. Their neighbours in the next lot over aren’t taking up a ton of space, she ventures, eyeing their van, and hands Arthur a token to indicate which tiny amount of the campsite is theirs for the week.

There’s a familiar black car pulled up in the space next to theirs, corralling a wide space of green that makes a shared yard between the front door of their RV and the tent.

Mary scrambles to undo her seatbelt and get out.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, when she has feet on firm ground again.

“Hello to you too, Mom.”

“We’re camping,” Cas says, tipping his head to look at her.

“No,” Sam says, huffing and holding a spare tent pole in one hand, the sagging roof of the tent in his other. “You two have been arguing about what you could barbecue for hours and I’m pitching the tent.”

“I think you forgot to put one of the tentpoles in,” Dean suggests helpfully.

Sam groans in frustration.

Arthur joins them, looking amused. “Well, this is a surprise.”

Mary turns on him. “Did you tell them we were coming here?”

“Why would I? This was supposed to be our getaway.”

“We just thought we’d get some of this seaside air,” Dean says. “After all, you put us all out of a job. Might as well go enjoy the world we don’t have to protect any more. Pulled a few strings with your lot and we got an all-expenses paid trip as an apology for the whole buying out the family business thing. Anyway, Cas and I were about to go into town and get some shrimp for the barbie.”

“That’s Australia,” Sam huffs.

Dean ignores him. “Can we pick anything up for you?”

“Beer,” Mary blurts.

Dean looks at her, scowling. “Mary. You think your own son has come on a week-long camping trip and didn’t bring beer? It’s like you don’t even know us.” He stomps around and gets the car, apparently genuinely injured. As he reverses out of their spot, it becomes apparent the side of the car was the only thing holding the tent up.

Sam’s left kicking the tent morosely as the sound of the engine fades. “I’m sorry, Mom, it all kind of… happened. But we’re here now, I guess we deal with it.”

“Do you need help with the tent?” she asks, never quite sure what to say to Sam.

“Let me,” Arthur says. “As a lad I went camping every year to Frinton-on-Sea. I know a thing or two about tents.”

“Is that why we came in an RV?” Mary asks.

He ignores her to start guiding Sam through putting up a tent properly.

Cas and Dean had got as far as setting up the barbecue, which looks new – the tent looks like it had been found somewhere in the depths of the Bunker. Mary’s just glad there isn’t a massive Aquarian star on the side. They’ve got a few large containers which would normally have holy water in them, but are lying empty in the dry grass, and Mary takes them to the tap to fill up. She dawdles to get back to their pitch.

Maybe they were just hungry, she thinks, because tempers are better when Dean and Cas return and fire up the barbecue. They use lighter fluid from the back of the car – Dean gets it from the secret bottom of the trunk, still propping it open with a shotgun like he’s always done. They have burgers and sausages, and she’s really hungry.

Dean and Cas work together on the barbecue and Mary watches them, wondering what exactly it is that takes two people to put each burger in its bun or two to fuss over how hot the coals are burning, but they turn it into a production.

Sam picks at his food, and turns his eyes skyward. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” he says.

“There’s an awning for the van,” Arthur replies at once. “We’ve got you covered.”

Dean rolls his own eyes skyward and, with all the food made, starts shovelling the coals from the barbecue into the fire Cas stacked up earlier with sticks from the woods. When that’s burning high between them, he grins around their loose little circle of folding chairs. “Well, this is jolly fun,” he says. “Like a little family holiday. Should we tell scary stories around the campfire?”

“Dean,” Sam says, warningly.

“I know a really spooky one about these woods,” Dean says, pressing on. “Something’s been killing campers who put their tents up too close to the trees.”

“There aren’t any monsters in this country,” Arthur says at once. “There aren’t any monsters anymore.”

“I’m just telling campfire stories,” Dean says, raising his hands in defence. “Don’t you want to go to sleep in that nice comfy tin can on wheels thinking about the thing in the woods that comes creeping out at night and taps on the side with its long claws? Looking for a way to pry that thing open?”

“Dude, we’re sleeping in a flimsy little tent,” Sam complains.

“Oh, what you’re taking their side now?”

Sam rolls his eyes and exchanges a look with Mary. He looks accusatory, more than troubled.

“We’ve had a long drive,” Mary says. “I think I’m going to turn in now.”

Dean eyes the woods suspiciously. “You know what, I might sleep in the car.” He pushes himself to his feet using Cas’s shoulder.

“The tent is _not_ that bad,” Sam says.

“We always sleep in the car, why do we have to sleep on the ground just because we’re in a campsite?”

Sam shakes his head. “The tent is right there and Ketch already made it for us.”

Mary leaves them bickering, and catches Cas looking concernedly at her as she stretches and heads for the door of the camper van. He always looks sort of concerned, so she ignores it. There’s a shower in the van, no matter how tiny it is, and she just wants to sleep.

She can hear them arguing still outside – the campsite is not particularly quiet, with dozens of families down here, some playing music, others just having their own loud family debates outside. There’s a main road not far away and the whoosh of cars still reaches them. This country is crowded, small and horrible. And supposedly free of monsters for longer than any of them have been alive.

Arthur comes in shortly after she gets into bed, while she’s still rolling around uncomfortably on the rigid mattress. “I was just having one last drink with your boys,” he says, when she raises herself up on her elbows to glare at him and ask him what he’s gotten her into now. “They’re quite something, aren’t they? They want to go to the beach tomorrow.”

She flops back down with a disappointed grunt. She can’t have this argument now. She has no idea how thin the walls are.

Arthur changes into silk pyjamas. Monogramed with his initials on the pocket. He’d offered to get her a pair made. She rolls over and pulls the blankets up to her ear, her back to him as he settles into the bed. “Good night, Arthur,” she says.

He lies there for a minute, seeming to weigh his chances.

A sudden clanging on the side of the van jolts her upright, knife in hand, but when the tapping stops she hears Dean’s laugh fading off in the direction of the conveniences.

Arthur looks at the large bowie knife in her hand as she catches her breath, and once she’s lain down again and slid it back under her pillow, he is silent, lying with his arms stiffly at his sides over the covers, and soon snoring.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep.

 

*

 

She wakes up too early – it’s probably not even five a.m. in America, but the sun is up and the camper van is too hot. Arthur’s not there, thankfully, so she gets up, dresses quickly in one of the more beach-appropriate outfits they bought her, and heads outside, putting on the massive designer sunglasses she loathes.

It’s windy and her wrap-around skirt immediately catches the breeze. Cas is leaning against the car, and somehow seems unaffected by it; the tent has slightly collapsed and there are paper plates and umbrellas blowing around the campsite.

“Good morning,” Cas says.

“H-Hello,” Mary says.

They stare at each other, she still standing on the bottom step of the van, Cas with a hand on the roof of the car, as if it’s grounding him. He opens his mouth to speak but Dean comes around the car, clutching the green cooler. His concession to the summer weather is to not wear the layers of jackets and flannel he’s normally swaddled in, but he’s still wearing jeans and boots. “We have cold sausages for breakfast,” he says. “And more beer. Are you coming to the beach with us?”

“Yes, I think so. Arthur said last night…”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Of course. Well we’re leaving in ten. Sam, quit messing with the tent; you’re not going to need it until tonight.”

Mary goes back into the RV and packs her handbag with sun cream, a handful of silver bullets, and checks that the small gun she took is still there. She’s never had a handbag before – this one is probably designer too, if she knew the brands. It’s gold, and the strap is a long metal chain which bites into her shoulder through her blouse.

 

*

 

The traffic all the way to the beach is a one mile an hour crawl, hot and boring as the Impala inches through traffic light after traffic light. Mary is squeezed in the back between Sam and Arthur.

No one talks much.

The town is heaving with tourists, all flocking to the spots with the best ice cream, the best doughnuts. Dean drives to the furthest carpark, a part of the beach with a five minute walk to any sea front shops. The coast beyond the beaches is bare, ancient cliffs crumbling slowly into the sea, inhospitable and unwelcoming. The waves are brown with sediment, relentless and loud on the shingle. Mary spreads out her blanket on the stones and it nearly blows away. Sam hurries to help her wrestle it down. He’s wearing shorts, flip flops, and has his own towel he wrangles into place next to her blanket, and weighs down with stones around the edges. It’s also stolen from the Bunker. She recognises it.

Arthur settles onto her huge blanket, all pale calves and polo shirt. He’s already got a bit of sunburn across his nose, but she doesn’t say anything.

Dean stomps past them, Cas in tow. They’re carrying a massive metal pail and the fold up shovels.

“What are you doing?” Mary asks, surprised.

Cas turns, and looks at her with an apologetic sort of shrug. “Looking for seashells.”

She watches Dean lead him down close to the waves, where the stones are wet, and they start shovelling them up, turning the stones around and picking shells out. Cas looks ridiculous in his suit and sensible shoes, the water rushing up to their ankles at times but neither of them paying much attention to it.

She supposes she feels ridiculous too, wearing thin layers of cotton blowing around in the wind, her hair back in a scarf, sunglasses hiding her face.

“You know, I’d like to try the ice cream here,” she says, starting to get up.

“I’ll get it, Mom,” Sam says at once, scrambling to his feet, and in a moment she’s alone.

Arthur is reading some huge book on World War II and his arms are starting to burn too, though his calves still glare in the sunlight. She pulls out the sun cream from her bag and starts covering her own exposed skin.

 

*

 

Sam runs a second mission into town after his lengthy expedition to get dribbly ice creams that taste of weak milk and sugar, disappearing for nearly an hour while Arthur burns and Cas and Dean collect shells. Finally he reappears with fish and chips wrapped in layers of paper, and calls Cas and Dean back to eat. They sit in a circle, nibbling at the oily fries, still molten hot from the deep fat fryer. Cas glares at the seagulls attracted by the smell, and they stay away, circling around them but not overhead, despite Dean’s many nervous glances upwards.

When he and Cas returned he’d dropped the pail down beside them, and she can just see without making it too obvious she’s craning to look, that they’ve collected almost entirely the same type of shells, little white limpets the size of her thumb, which seem to be in abundance mixed in among the stones. She can see a few bashed up shells just in the area they’re sitting, and spots Cas examining one between his fingers for a moment, then drop it into the bucket.

The wind picks up while they’re still finishing their lunch, and grey clouds rush in from the west, the temperature rapidly dropping. She shivers and pulls her thin skirt closer around her legs, and in a moment Cas is standing up, shrugging off his coat, and holding it out to her.

“Oh – thanks,” she says, while Dean watches, his jaw tight, something wary in his eyes. She stands up and pulls it on – it’s warm, and smells clean, feels like new, not a loose thread or tear in it, except a line of wonky stitching on the inside lining that she notices as she pulls it around her shoulders. Everyone’s looking at her as she shoves her hands through the sleeves, and she doesn’t like the way they do. Cas looks smaller without the coat, the wind ruffling his hair and pulling at his tie. She can only imagine how bulky and strange she looks sitting back down with her bare legs and sandals sticking out the bottom of the coat.

“We should keep looking for shells,” Dean says, putting down the remains of his fish on the towel.

Cas has also barely eaten any of his portion, and he swaps it for the bucket, and takes Dean’s hand to haul him to his feet. They head back to where the receding tide has left more stones for them to pick through.

Mary glances at Sam, wondering what to even ask him about them, but he’s fallen into conversation with Arthur about the book he’s reading.

She doesn’t have anything to do, except sit and watch the waves from between her toes, and Dean and Cas off in the distance, digging and talking and doing their own thing. She’s almost glad when a fat drop of rain lands on her shin, startling her.

“Oh, crap,” Sam says, and then the heavens open.

They don’t make it back to the car before they’re soaked through, and bundle everything in the trunk. Mary darts around and takes the front seat, and Dean gives her a weird look when he gets into the car, his hair damp and nearly flat to his head. She feels herself drawing back into the coat she’s still wearing, and she looks away out the window without saying anything as he starts the car and they abandon the beach part of the vacation.

 

*

 

It’s still raining when they return to the campsite. They cram themselves into the van and Arthur folds up the bed, unfolds the table, and Dean beats him to the punch producing a pack of battered cards from inside his jacket pocket. Mary leaves Cas’s coat draped over the bench by the door, but he doesn’t put it back on yet, though everyone else has added several layers. She got an excuse to change out of the awful skirt.

The rain hammers down on the roof, and Arthur brings out an extremely expensive, old, scotch with the wry comment that he _has_ been saving it for a rainy day, after all.

They drink, and play cards, and it seems almost friendly, the rain drawing a truce.

It stops at around five.

“Do you want to go for a walk in the woods with us?” Dean asks. “Us” is Cas, pulling his coat back on, already by the door.

“We’ve got to see what the damage is to the tent,” Sam says, with a groan. It had looked pretty caved in when they got back, but Sam seems determined.

“You know what, a walk would be lovely,” Mary says.

Dean’s eyebrows raise, like he hadn’t expected anyone to take them up on the offer, but he nods. “Sure, put your walking boots on. It will be muddy out there.”

When she joins him and Cas at the car, where he’s once more looking in the trunk, he hands her a flashlight. She wonders how many weapons he’s got on him. He’s back in all his usual layers; the air is cooler after the rain, like the summer heat was only an illusion.

“Do you think we’ll need this? It’s going to be daylight for hours.”

He shrugs. “You know, in case you go through a portal to the Upside Down or something.”

She subconsciously touches the gun she’s now got in her waistband, under her jacket. She thinks Dean notices, but it’s the first smile she’s seen him have for her all vacation, so she just follows them onto the marked footpath into the woods.

The thing she really notices is how peaceful it is away from everything. There’s an adventure playground on the edge of the woods, where the kids are screaming and laughing almost all day, but after five minutes of following the trail most of the sounds fade, and for the first time Mary begins to feel comfortable.

She’s a step behind Dean and Cas, who aren’t talking as well, but it’s their own silence.

The trees are small, in this country. Younger, the world tamed and not an inch left unclaimed or unaccounted for, even the wildernesses landscaped and controlled. The path is clearly marked with log steps on the hilly parts, wooden borders and scattered yellow gravel to make sure no one can mistake they’re on the carefully planned path. She looks between the trees, with wide gaps, cleared undergrowth, and thinks it would be very easy to go off the path and explore.

Dean and Cas seem to know where they’re going – they must be near the heart of the woods (which, she saw on the GPS’s map on the way in, are a tiny patch of land to her and couldn’t take more than an hour to walk through and they’ve been going half an hour). They come to a clearing, grass growing optimistically up against the tree line, and a little meadow, full of wildflowers and tall weeds. A tree grows in the middle, an old oak.

The path veers by it, close enough to get a peek, but goes right on past. Dean and Cas glance at each other, and step over the inch-high border to the path, to go look. Mary follows.

Evening sunlight is slanting through the trees around them and catching on the old oak. Mary’s surprised to see it throws into sharp relief that the gnarly trunk is scored with many carvings of initials; the bark is chunky and deeply patterned across the surface, so the letters have had to dig deep to leave an impression; anyone determined enough to do it would need a large knife and patience, but there are dozens of initials on the tree.

“That seems cruel to the tree,” Mary says.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees, pulling a large knife from inside his pocket. He grins at Cas. “Where should we put our names?”

“Wait – you’re not gonna…”

“Lore says if you’re dumb enough to believe the myth it means you’ll be together forever if you write your name on this tree, well, something’s gonna come try and prove you wrong.” He draws a finger across his throat, then frowns. “Or whatever the gesture is for being messily ripped apart by something with huge claws. Anyway, pretty much certain fatality rate from this thing and enough anecdotal evidence to prove it’s the tree. We have all the research in the car if you wanna look.”

“We’re on a hunt,” Mary says faintly.

“Sure, there’s _always_ gonna be something to hunt. Ghosts, cursed objects, haunted mirrors,”

“Witches,” Cas contributes.

“… pissed off tree dryads… That doesn’t go away when you shut out all the monsters.”

“Wait – does Arthur know?”

Dean shrugs, and shoves the knife into the tree in a suitably un-marred section near a huge gall. “Hey am I supposed to carve the C and you carve the D, or the other way around?”

Cas answers Mary instead of Dean – “When we found out where you were going for this vacation, Dean started researching to see if there was anything in the area. Since we’re all part of the Men of Letters now, we, ah, pulled some strings. For research and making sure you went to the right place with some whispers in Ketch’s ear.”

“Mick sold us out.”

“Basically,” Dean says, still carving away. “This is harder than it looks, by the way. Any time you want to lend a hand.”

Cas drifts over to inspect his work. “You’re not going with the grain of the bark,” he comments.

“You do it then.”

Cas takes the knife from him and jams it into the tree with his uncanny strength. Mary reaches out and puts her hand on the tree near where she’s standing, both to comfort it, and because she’s feeling light-headed. The air feels all wrong now, cold and the sun is fading. The trees rustle angrily in the wind, and she wants to leave.

“Are you done?” she asks, sounding harsher than she means to.

“I think so,” Cas says, stepping back to look at his work. She can’t help but watch Dean’s face pass through a moment of pain as he examines it, before he schools his expression neutral.

“Okay, that’s enough vandalism for one day. Gimme the knife and let’s go drink the rest of Ketch’s scotch.”

They head out of the clearing, but despite desperately wanting to hurry after them, Mary pauses to look at the lopsided letters scratched into the bark. Something about seeing “D+C” makes her heart hurt. She tries to shake it away like Dean clearly did, and finally stumbles after them.

 

*

 

She forgot to ask if Sam knew, but the more she thinks, the more she realises, no, he doesn’t. He has no idea why they’re there, except that Dean seems intent on crashing her vacation with Arthur, and he came along for the ride, to build bridges and stop them all killing each other.

Which, to be fair, seems like a real eventual outcome.

Arthur is starting to feel the sunburn, apparently, because despite the cool evening he’s wearing no long sleeves, and is glistening slightly with after sun lotion. Cas could probably heal him, but he doesn’t, and they sit on their sides, Mary and Arthur by the van, Dean and Cas against the Impala, Sam by the sagging tent, and watch Dean barbecue their next meal. Mary misses vegetables.

Conversation is muted – Arthur knows a lot about local castles, places they might visit while they’re in this part of the country. Dean’s completely uninterested, and Sam can’t keep it up as a group conversation for long.

Mary watches Cas and Dean sit beside each other, Cas holding a hot dog he’s not eating, until Dean finishes his first, and takes the one Cas was holding straight from the angel’s hands without even asking, and bites into it. Without something for his hands to do, Cas rests them on his knees. He and Dean are sitting so close that their legs are nearly touching, and Mary wonders that she never noticed that tension before. Dean shifts and his knee accidentally touches Cas’s for a moment but pulls back an inch like he got a shock, though nothing else about his movements or face betrays it. A moment later he casually glances around the circle, starting with Sam, and by the time his eyes have swept her way she’s taking another bite of her burger and staring into the fire.

Arthur seems to have had enough, sunburned and slightly drunk, and excuses himself to go to bed. Sam’s mostly learned to get the tent to stay up on its own, and she lends him a hand. When they’re done with that, she turns to see that Dean has taken the pail of shells out from the trunk of the car, and is sprinkling them in a loose circle around their lot.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Sam asks.

Cas is lurking at his shoulder all of a sudden, holding out Sam’s gun. “You’ll probably want this. It’s loaded with iron rounds.”

“We’re hunting… something fairy?”

“A dryad. And it’s hunting us. Or, Dean and I, to be precise.”

“Oh, okay.” He glances at Mary. “Does – Does mom know?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m right here, Sam. Of course I know.”

“We told her this afternoon,” Cas says.

“But she and Ketch are –”

“I’m _right here_ , Sam. And you’ve been with us the entire time as well.”

Sam looks at Dean, and shrugs. “Well, if Dean says we’re hunting something in this land without monsters, we’re hunting something here.”

Dean closes the trunk with some force. “I think I just felt it start to rain again. It’s going to be a long night.”

“What’s the plan?” Mary asks. Yes, she feels a drop of rain glance off her ear as well.

“The seashells should protect us long enough to give us time to react. But we gotta play dumb before it gets to us, or it will know we’re onto it and won’t come out to play. All the attacks happened close to dawn. You can’t just sit up all night and point a gun into the woods.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Don’t let _Arthur_ know what we’re doing or he’ll find some way to ruin it before we start. We don’t want, uh, Men of Letters SWAT teams showing up. Go… cuddle up to him or whatever.”

Mary opens her mouth to argue, but she sees Sam flinching back from Dean’s comment, looking at her nervously, knowing he’s about to be caught in the middle of the argument again, and that kills her angry response.  She turns on her heel and goes into the van.

Arthur is already asleep, thankfully, lying on his back and taking up more than his fair share of the bed. She sits at the folded up table for a while, checking her gun, now loaded with spare iron rounds. She sets a vibrating alarm on her phone for before dawn. There’s not much more she can do to prepare. The rain is starting to fall heavily, rattling on the roof, and it’s cold, the night time air more like early spring than summer. She’s tired and she should rest so she’s not useless… It takes her several long glances at the bed to give up and return to it.

She has to push at Arthur to make him move so she has room, and when he does move, he shifts aside only to snake out an arm around her waist and try to pull her close. She shoves at him, and that wakes him up enough to open his eyes.

“Come on, Mary, aren’t we going to have any fun on this holiday?” he murmurs, letting her squirm free only to possessively pull at her leg, a shade off playfully.

“Let go of me,” she says as levelly as she can. The knife is still under her pillow unless he moved it – the boys are probably hoping she’d do it.

“Mary, don’t you get it? Killers like us… There’s no place left for us in this world. We need to do _something_ to let off steam, we agreed.”

She gags at that but it’s a thought to put off killing him then and there out of spite that he’s wrong about her. What to do about the immediate problem –

There’s a hammering on the door that makes her jump and scramble for the knife. Still under the pillow, thankfully.

“Mom?! Let us in! The tent flooded out!”

She laughs with relief to hear Sam’s voice – normal, silly problems, like she’d let her boys go camp in the back yard and disaster struck. Arthur isn’t moving to help, so she gets up and unlocks the door. Three very soggy men trail in, dragging salvaged camping supplies.

“Can we stay here tonight?” Sam asks sheepishly, as Dean sizes up the one spare bunk in the overhead space, and shucks his boots off, clearly intending to stay.

“Why can’t you sleep in that car of yours?” Arthur complains.

Dean looks at him like he’s crazy. “There’s only room for two of us – would you make Cas stand out in the rain all night just because he doesn’t sleep?”

Cas tips his head. “Actually, that’s not such a –”

“Shut up and get in the bunk.”

Clearly the fact that they’re going to be attacked by an enraged woodland spirit at some point in the night is not bothering them too much right now.

As Sam spreads out his sleeping bag on the floor, taking up the entire length of the caravan, she realises she had never wondered where Cas was sleeping before.

She settles back into bed, and as the grumbling and shuffling of all their guests settles down back into silence, now the rain hammering on the roof is a pleasant noise – she’s grateful for it.

 

*

 

Mary sleeps for a couple of hours, but wakes up heart pounding and a cold sweat clinging to her while it’s still pitch dark. The rain has slowed, and the van is warm and musty in a way that makes her damp skin feel feverish, with at least four people breathing too much in an enclosed space. She’s not sure about Cas’s contribution to that. Four and a half maybe.

She wonders why she woke up so abruptly and if it would be worth trying to even sleep again. She’s not scared of the hunt, or that Dean or Cas will get hurt – they can look after themselves. She’s worried about Arthur’s reaction. He’s been patient about her boys showing up on the vacation, but then they have barely been alone. Once this comes out though…

There’s a quiet scraping noise against the side of the van, right near her head; it sounds like something just brushing by, trailing fingernails over the metal.

Or something like the sound of twigs on a window.

She shudders, and sits up, reaching for the knife again. She hid her gun in her bag and it’s at the foot of the bed.

There’s a louder scratching, closer to the door, and then a thunk that makes her bolt out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” Cas’s voice rumbles from the overhead bunk. He sounds sleepier than Mary had thought he could be; that he never slept. Still, he’s awake now and probably always had one eye open.

“It’s coming,” she hisses, picking her way around the folded out bed, to search for her bag. Sam’s taking up all the space on the floor, and he must have kicked her bag aside, because in the darkness all she finds is a handful of his foot.

“It’s only three,” Cas replies. In the bare minimal visibility of light pollution and a distant streetlight filtering between the thin curtains, she can see the outline of Cas sitting up, reaching for the ladder down. Dean grumbles and rolls over.

“You didn’t hear that?” Mary demands.

Cas gets down to the floor and Sam grunts, apparently having just been trodden on or kicked, and still doesn’t wake up.

“No, there’s nothing out there.” Cas opens his hand, palm up, and a faint blue-white glow comes from his palm, filling the space with eerie dark shadows. She spots her bag and grabs it. When she stands up, Cas looks worried, his face grey in this light. “Are you sure you aren’t dreaming?”

She opens her mouth to answer, and is drowned out by sudden sustained banging on the side of the van that echoes around the enclosed space, loud enough that it feels like it’s beating on her brain. She draws the gun from the bag and aims it at the door.

“Mary!” Cas says sharply, loud enough that Sam jerks awake, and Dean sits up.

“Mom, are you okay?”

“Mom, put the gun down.”

The light turns on; though Sam is finally scrambling up and out of the way, the only one of them near a switch is Arthur.

“What’s going on here?” he demands. His words draw another round of banging, that makes Mary flinch.

“There is a monster coming,” she says calmly; her hands are strangely steady on the gun, though she’s feverishly hot and sweating now, anticipation twisting in her stomach. “We’re here to kill it. Like we do.”

Dean hops down from the last three steps of the bunk and approaches her carefully. “Mom, there’s nothing out there.”

Arthur is up too now, unarmed, approaching in her peripheral vision with his usual swagger. “Mary, come back to bed. Let’s just enjoy this nice holiday without monsters.”

“But it’s right out there. Can’t you hear it?”

“You’re dreaming,” Sam says. “There aren’t any monsters. We got rid of them all.”

“No, I’m not.” It bangs again and she winces and waits for the noise to pass. “There’s always going to be monsters. And we have to fight them. Together.”

Dean puts a hand on her shoulder. “Mom. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”

The door bursts open and the dryad rushes into the room, so fast that Mary catches her glowing blue eyes for only a second – gets off one useless shot, before branches tangle around her wrists, rough and immeasurably strong as an ancient tree should be. She’s dragged up to hang from the ceiling, and can only watch as the creature takes a heavy step into the van, making it tilt and shake with her weight. She’s ancient, gnarled, twisted with lost branches and galls, scarred with names carved into her flesh, the freshest letters bleeding sap over her heart. D+C.

Branches lash out and pin Sam and Dean down in moments, smothering them to struggle uselessly under the weight of the leaves. Cas seems to fight back for a moment, but Mary screams when a branch spears into his side and pins him to the wall, through his stomach.

Arthur stands uselessly to the side, watching, mouth open, hands hanging limp. The branches don’t chase him.

Mary struggles and kicks against the branches twining slowly around her, squeezing hard enough to let her know they could kill her, but not _yet_. She looks at Cas – he’s dying, roots growing over him from the spot where he had been stabbed, growing _inside_ him, pouring out of his mouth and sprouting leaves –

 _She’s dreaming_.

“Leave them alone!” she yells, struggling against the weight of the branches, crushed and scratched. “It’s my fault!” The dryad stops, freezes so she’s almost just a tree again, and then her eyes fix on Mary again, green and bright.

“It’s my fault,” Mary repeats.

The dryad pulls her branches away from Sam and Dean, drags them back out through Cas and lets him fall to the floor, coughing blood but miraculously still alive, in a way that only an angel could take that punishment and not die.

She sees Dean rush to Cas’s side, Sam turning to look at her with horror – “Wait, Mom! No!”

The dryad crunches her branches tight around Mary.

 

*

 

She wakes up coughing and gasping for air, feeling like a ton weight on her chest. Each breath splinters less than the last, until she can sit up, wiping her streaming eyes. Her wrists are bruised with rope marks, and she’s dizzy, feels the dream seeping out of her bit by bit.

She’s lying on the cold concrete floor of a storage room, and Ketch is sitting on a crate, wiping a knife down.

“I didn’t know if you were going to make it,” he says, dry but sounding impressed despite it.

She looks around and sees the djinn they were hunting in a heap by the door. It’s not getting back up any time soon. It barely looks like a djinn any more after he was done with it.

“Your device didn’t work.” Her voice is a dry rasp. It’s coming back to her now – pointing the latest ridiculous contraption at the djinn only for the thing to whir uselessly, and the monster to laugh in her face. That was the last thing she remembered. How long had it had her? Ketch had been a town over and following a different lead, last time they’d talked.

“That’s not my fault, it’s just what R&D sent us. They said it would work.”

 “ _And_ there’s a cure for djinn poison,” she spits, massaging her wrists.

His eyebrows go up at that information. “I wouldn’t know about that either.”

“It’s _ancient_ ,” she complains, now sitting up properly. Her chest is fine – her breathing is back to normal. It feels like she should be bruised all over, crushed, in traction if she’d miraculously made it out, but she only aches a little. “Did you seriously just cut me down and wait to see if I’d wake up?”

He shrugs. “You’re tough and you did. Shall we get going? There’s nothing else to do here.”

She gingerly gets to her feet. Her legs shake, but Ketch is already pulling the corrugated door up with that awful metal rumbling sound, and she shrugs it off and ducks under the door as soon as it’s up. She can’t even look at him all the way back to where she left the truck. His bike is beside it, so she just climbs in and starts the engine, waiting for him to get the message and leave.

When the sound of the motorbike has echoed away between the warehouses, she pulls out her phone, not sure who to text first. Cas, she thinks. It’s been weeks since they talked; if he knows anything, he’d know it through Sam or Dean.

But she has a text from Sam waiting, only from the last couple of hours.

“Hey Mom – I’m at the MoL HQ with Mick. Got a lot to talk about. Can’t wait to work with you.”

She drops her phone in her lap and rests her head on the steering wheel.

It’s a long drive back.


End file.
